Black History Month

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Painter Alma Thomas is perhaps best known for her participation in the Washington Color School. Yet, for generations of African American families in Washington, D.C., she was better known as Miss Thomas, the art teacher at Shaw
Junior High School where she taught between 1924 and 1960. During her
tenure, she deliberately incorporated African American history into her
pedagogy. In 1937, one of her colleagues, Ophelia D. Wells, an English teacher
at Washington’s Armstrong High School, approvingly described Thomas’s
curriculum in an essay for the Journal of National Association of College Women.
Wells commented, “Through a series of lectures, slides, and pictures, the child
is taught the history of art with emphasis on the history of American art and
the art of the American Negro.”

Alma Thomas, like many of her contemporaries, marked Negro
History Week every February. Historian Carter
G. Woodson first established Negro History Week
in 1926 to foster greater knowledge and appreciation of African American
contributions to American life and thought. To build support for the annual
event, Woodson circulated literature, bibliographies, and other related
materials among African American institutions such as women’s clubs, schools,
newspapers, and magazines both in D.C. and across the United States.

Alma Thomas developed annual programs in conjunction with Woodson’s
campaign at her school in Northwest Washington, D.C. In so doing, she
inculcated the notion that visual culture was an important key to understanding
history and memory. To cultivate her pupils’ appreciation for art, she insisted
that the boys and girls both produce and study art firsthand. Her students
displayed their work in the school’s corridors, classrooms, and gallery. And,
she organized exhibitions of Shaw student work at Howard University’s
Gallery of Art. Thomas also invited leading
and local African American artists and architects to present their work in
exhibitions and lectures in observance of Negro History Week. She encouraged
students to explore the city’s cultural institutions by taking Shaw’s boys and girls on field trips to the public library, the Library of Congress, the
Capitol, the Smithsonian, the Freer Art Gallery, and the Duncan Phillip
Memorial Galleries. She likely also took her students to the African American–owned
Barnett
Aden Gallery where Thomas both served as Vice–President of the Board and
exhibited her own work.

Upon her retirement in 1960, Assistant Superintendent of
Junior High Schools John S. Koontz congratulated Thomas and thanked her for her
more than 35 years of service. He noted,
“Your work in Art has helped provide a sense of appreciation for the finer
things of life at a time when we are prone to over emphasize harsh realities.
Your interest in children, your personal magnetism, and your training, all
combine to make you a most effective teacher.”

Kelly Quinn is the Terra Foundation Project Manager for Online Scholarly and Educational Initiatives at the Archives of American Art.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Fully Digitized Collections Document African American Art and Artists of the Twentieth Century

In honor of Black History Month, the Archives of American Art is highlighting our rich collection of papers documenting African American art in the twentieth century, particularly the papers of artists who began their careers during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. All of the artists’ papers discussed in this blog post have been fully digitized and are available to researchers online.

The papers of Palmer C. Hayden include 32 diaries, correspondence, photographs, and 47 sketchbooks documenting a period of nearly forty years. Hayden won first prize for “Distinguished Achievement among Negroes” at the Harmon Foundation’s first awards ceremony in 1926, and he used that award to continue his studies in Paris. When he returned to New York in 1932 he worked for the Treasury Relief Art Project and the Works Progress Administration. As indicated by his numerous sketchbooks, Hayden used Harlem and Paris as inspiration for his paintings of African American life.

Like Hayden, William H. Johnson studied painting in New York and France during the 1920s. While in France he had the opportunity to meet African American expatriate painter Henry Ossawa Tanner and was greatly impressed by his work.

The William H. Johnson papers include biographical material, exhibition catalogs, photographs, and scrapbooks which primarily document the period that he lived in Europe with his wife, Danish artist Holcha Krake, his work for the WPA as a painting teacher at the Harlem Community Art Center, and his career in New York during the 1940s.

Painter and muralist Charles Henry Alston was an active member of the Harlem art community as a director of the Harlem Art Workshop and as a founder of the Harlem Artists Guild. In 1950, he became the first African American instructor at the Art Students League.

Alston’s small collection, the Charles Henry Alston papers, primarily documents his later career as an artist and educator and includes letters from Harlem Renaissance figures and personal friends Romare Bearden, Byron Brown, Jacob Lawrence, Hale Woodruff, and Dr. Louis T. Wright.

Jacob Lawrence was a student of Charles Alston at the Harlem Art Worshop, and gained early success as a painter of African American history. Edith Halpert exhibited “The Migration Series” at her Downtown Gallery in 1941 establishing Lawrence as the first African American artist to exhibit in a top New York gallery.

The Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight papers include extensive correspondence with friends, artists, students, art schools, galleries, museums, as well as writings by Lawrence, news clippings, exhibition catalogs, and photographs.

Romare Bearden grew up in Harlem, surrounded by the cultural explosion of the 1920s. During the 1930s he studied art, worked as a cartoonist, and was a member of the Harlem Artists Guild. Until his retirement in 1969, Bearden worked as a social worker with the New York City Department of Social Services, working on his art at night and on weekends.

In 1964, Bearden became the first art director of the newly established Harlem Cultural Council, and served as an active spokesman and writer on artistic and social issues. The Romare Bearden papers include numerous letters referring to African American art movements of the 1960s and 1970, writings by Bearden, photographs, drawings, and printed material.

Also available online is the digitized microfilm of the Prentiss Taylor papers. During his time in New York, Taylor developed close friendships with poet Langston Hughes and writer Carl Van Vechten. While working as a lithographer and printmaker, he collaborated with Hughes in the formation of the Golden Stair Press to produce publications reflecting the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Prentiss Taylor papers contain extensive subject/correspondence files, which include correspondence with Hughes and Van Vechten, as well as numerous photographs of notable Harlem Renaissance figures, many taken by Van Vechten.